Fahrenheit 451

No wonder this movie has such horrible reviews. It's nothing like the book. Which is completely ridiculous given what book it is. The film is trash. I agree with previous posts: if you want to make your own thing, call it something different. Don't dare call it Farenheit 451. You've taken one of man's more beautiful creations and basterdized it. By creating this movie, the producers are in a way just as bad as the firemen in the book.

I'm all for creative new spins on ideas from great works, such as Ray Bradbury's F451, but just don't call it Fahrenheit 451. Another reviewer asked why so many negative reviews, well it's because when you choose to make an adaption of such a beloved book, you do the author and fans justice by sticking to the main themes of the movie and pivotal points and roles. If you want to make such a loosely based version, call it The Fireman or something. I don't want to be a huge fan of a book, get excited it's being remade, have the expectation it is going to follow the book because it's named as such, only to watch something that misses the mark. This was disappointing.

I found Francois Truffaut's film version of Fahrenheit 451 hard going, not helped by a distant performance from star Oskar Werner.

Ramin Bahrani reimagines the Ray Bradbury novel. He sets it in an era of fake news, fake history, disinformation. Propaganda at its best. Burn books and you can reinvent an alternative timeline.

Set in a future Dystopia, Guy Montag (Michael P Jordan) and his mentor Captain Beatty (Michael Shannon) are firemen after a second civil war America who burn books, a tradition that goes far back as Benjamin Franklin! It is easier to control people if they could not find information and think for themselves. It was easy to keep people happy if they do not get offended from what they read.

Montag carries out his work diligently and is in line for promotion but gets taken in by the Eels, a counter group who preserve the information contained in books. They learn books by heart, the upload it on the net, they rebel against the government.

Shannon can play the villain in his sleep. Jordan has the harder part but he is rather vacuous, maybe he is meant to be that way, a person who has never learned to think or question for himself.

There are some good ideas in this film but they never hang together or are fully realised. With two failed adaptations, I think Bradbury's novel might come across better on the page than on the screen.

Subject line says it all, if you want an updated Fahrenheit 451, watch Equilibrium, and for true context, watch the original adaptation from 1966, as both are superior to this silly mess. I won't even go into the reasons why this film is bad, it just is, and other reviews have touched on many points why. Both films I cite above are far more entertaining and insightful, as this film has absolutely nothing to say.

This was going to be bad.... The line " you dream of running from me, you wake up and apologize" (Or something like that) made me think that I didn't know if I could make it through this movie. Which is a shame because I really like both lead actors. Maybe the director just didn't direct them correctly but Ray Bradbury must be turning in his grave at this retelling. I've seen the movie Equilibrium which is loosely based on the book, and while it's no masterpiece it is boatloads better than this